Identifying and selecting the best individuals for a given task has been an important aspect of all societies since the beginning of recorded history. Every leader wants to have confidence that his or her team members are well suited for the task at hand. Historically, leaders with an important task have tried to select individuals or team members using resumes, personal interviews or sometimes even gut feel. Sometimes leaders get it right and select individuals or team members that perform well. Sometimes leaders get it wrong and select the wrong people. When a leader makes the wrong selection, money can be lost, time can be lost, and in the worst case lives can be lost.
With so much at stake leaders are continually trying to refine their ability to select the right person for the right task or project. As leaders have found, different tasks require different individuals or different teams. This is primarily because individuals and team members often need to have more than one set of skills to be successful at any given task, project or activity. Successful individuals and team members need to have certain personality skills, so that they may effectively work with others. Individuals and team members may also need to have technical skills in specific areas that will help them more effectively complete the task, project or activity. Historically, tools to identify an individual's personality have existed. These tools go back to the time of the ancient Greeks. Hippocrates around 400 B.C. first suggested that individual behaviors (personalities) were caused by 4 body fluids that he called humors. Approximately 200 years later Galen described 4 temperaments too. Use of these theories with various revisions carried right up until the 20th Century. In the last century many different researchers developed similar tools to try to explain individual variances in personality and behavior. The DiSC profile is another example of a personality profile. It was developed based on the work of William Moulton Marston. It uses four personality profile aspects. The Myers-Briggs type indicator was also developed in the last century. It was based on the theories of Carl Jung. The Myers-Briggs tool has 16 categories for classification of individual personalities. There are many more classification tools that have been developed over the years. Many of these personality profile tools use a four personality classification model that is similar to the personality profiles that were developed by the ancient Greeks. However, these tools all lack the ability to identify an individual's personality, which when coupled with the individual's level of technical skill, can help drive innovation success.